It all stacks up

Earlier this week, it became a legal requirement in England for all restaurants, pubs and takeaways employing over 250 people to display calorie figures for food and soft drinks on menus, websites and ordering apps. This has been widely criticised for being an unreasonable Nanny State intrusion, for potentially causing problems for people with eating disorders, and for being a pointless gesture that will make no difference in combating obesity. But do these arguments really stack up, as it were?

Yes, it is another imposition on businesses at a time when many are struggling, but on the other hand chains such as Wetherspoon’s and McDonald’s have been doing it for years. Anywhere with below 250 employees is excluded, as are one-off specials and dishes of the day. I am not an expert in this field, but I would assume that calorie counts can be assembled in a relatively straightforward manner as the figures per unit of weight for various ingredients are already established. It doesn’t require laboratory analysis.

It is true that it may cause problems for a relatively small number of people with eating disorders, but to use that as an excuse to abandon the whole idea is letting the tail wag the dog. Calorie figures have been shown on all packaged foods for many years, and that is now seen as uncontroversial. And, in a typical week, how many meals does a person with an eating disorder buy from chain dining or takeaway outlets anyway?

Similarly, displaying alcoholic strength on drinks was claimed to be problematical for alcoholics, but it has long been accepted as normal and something consumers expect to see. Indeed, if anything it has tended to lead to a reduction in strengths – the idea that most drinkers are attracted by “bangs per buck” has been disproved.

It probably won’t make much difference to obesity, but then the entire government anti-obesity strategy is misconceived anyway. And of course calories are only one figure in the overall mix of nutrition. But what it will do is to give consumers the facts to make informed decisions – it is treating them as adults.

It is hard to believe now that, going back forty years, the strength of alcoholic drinks was never declared. When CAMRA first published figures of original gravity – which is a rough approximation to alcoholic strength – in the 1970s, there was an outcry from the brewers, but it is now accepted is routine. I would expect that, in twenty years’ time, we will look back with surprise that calorie figures were ever not stated.

While there are legitimate concerns about practicality, I really don’t see that there should be any objection in principle. Hopefully a means will be found to extend it to smaller businesses without creating too much extra bureaucracy, possibly by the use of indicative figures rather than any detailed analysis. Surely it’s known approximately how many calories there are in a 4 oz burger or a portion of pilau rice.

What it may do is to shine a spotlight on the issue of portion size. As I argued here, surely a significant contributory factor in rising obesity rates is that most out-of-home catering outlets now serve up standard portions that are far more than the average person wants or needs. Yet there remains a social stigma against not clearing your plate, and if you fail to do so it contributes to food waste, which is seen as a major issue. As I said, if the catering industry fails to act on this they are likely to be faced with mandatory calorie caps in the future.

If you’re concerned about bureaucratic overreach, surely you should be far more exercised about the incredible tangle of restrictions on the placement and promotion of “HFSS” foods (i.e. the vast majority of processed food items) that are going to be introduced from 1 October this year.